Errors or fallacies in the text are categorized and denoted under the following headings:

Errors of fact: "Wrong"

Irrelevant conclusions and non sequiturs: "Red Herring"

Other errors of logic: "Nonsense"

Errors of interpretation or misunderstanding: "Confused"

Arguments that only work for specially selected data: "Cherry Picking"

Other arguments that have no scientific validity: "Invalid"

Statements that contradict or conflict with other statements in the text: "Inconsistent"

Arthur, unlike Chris, is a nice fellow so he sums it up at the beginning

Also please note that simply itemizing errors in an article doesn't prove one way or another whether the central premise of the article is wrong or not (the "fallacy fallacy"). Monckton's central question is on climate sensitivity. The magnitude of that sensitivity is a central question of climate science as a whole, and in particular centers on the sign and magnitudes of various feedbacks to temperature increase in Earth's climate system. The most recent IPCC report (AR4, Working Group 1, 2007) presented a robust collection of evidence from physical modeling, paleoclimate, and observed recent response of the climate system for their conclusions of a temperature response to CO2 doubling of between 2 and 4.5 K, with a best estimate around 3 K. The substantial collection of errors in Monckton's article renders his arguments against this IPCC conclusion quite unconvincing.

88 comments:

Anonymous
said...

MarkeyMouse says: Robust Climate Models? I think Lucia at rankexploits has pretty well debunked them. Their forecasts are all wrong. Observed recent responses of climate system are no temperature increase, completely the reverse of the so called "climate sensitivity". Paleoclimate shows no correlation between Temp and CO2, apart from a period where CO2 levels lag Temp by 600 years. The whole IPCC is completely discredited from top to bottom.

Markeymouse says. PS Is the the Arthur Smith, erstwhile vocal but not actual litigator DP manager on a mission who feels obligated to force his partizan views on his employers non partizan website? The one who only has to say something is wrong to make it wrong in fact. His own judge of the rightness of his own opinions? Pah.

Oh, Markeymouse, your flavour of denial is sooo yesterday. Do you take ice with your drink? Denial has now reached the stage of a pathological condition amongst its devotees. Why don't you study climate science?

If the blockbuster information on Lucia's site is so Galilean, she'll publish in the journals and we'll all watch the warmer paradigm crumble under the weight of her logic. And she'll get fat on the excellent catered food found on the Heritage Victory Tour, Co-sponsored by AEI/CEI, Cato, and the newly-regenerated Western Fuels Assn.

Lucia and Roger Jr seem quite confident in their analysis, which is not warranted by their results in my opinion. Ie "IPCC has been falsified".

But then, I don't know how the great public views them. Any engineer with some signal analysis background should have some red flags raised with Lucia's claims.

A noisy trend will have shorter time periods where you can compute an opposite short time trend. These don't falsify the existence of a longer term trend, but is completely expected and consistent with the longer time trend plus noise model.

Say if the world had a zero temperature trend, and you start measuring temperatures at some arbitrary time points, if you know the probability distribution of the yearly temperature measurements, there is a formula for the probability of a new temperature record for each year. The first year is both record cold and record hot. The second year is either record cold or record hot. The third year has some pretty big probability of being either. Etc etc...

Now if you instead don't have a real underlying flat trend but have a minuscule negative trend, you still get hot year records, especially at the beginning, because of the noise. With time the frequency of making these records goes down as probably the frequency of cold records as well, depending on the noise vs trend of course, until ultimately the noise is overpowered by the trend and you start making more records again. Of course, there are still regional hot records here and there even when the global trend is cooling. This is expected again because of the noise.

Same the other way around.

Since the yearly temperature variation is large compared to the global warming trend, you can expect records and short time trends to be quite all over the place and vary a lot when you pick different time points.

John V has actually plotted a picture of different trend windows sliding over the temperature record in time.

Of course, this is not even touching the uselessness of comparing a single year or month or even day now to one maybe 70 years ago. (It's now as cold/warm as it was in 1934 or something). You can find a counterpart for probably any short time or narrow area temperature in the past record. Or a short time or narrow area temperature trend as well. But still, somehow The Register thinks it's insightful.

Hi all - I see Tim Lambert at Deltoid has posted on this too, with a bit more info on the origins of the matter (a quoted letter from Gerald Marsh, who seems to have instigated the whole affair at Physics and Society).

Lucia's commentary on my list was based on a very preliminary version (about 80% shorter) and a misreading of a perhaps poorly worded phrase. Her interpretation of the "most" matter did not apply then, and I hope I have rewritten the phrase in question so it is clearer now why.

The point of including even such trivial examples of misrepresentation by Monckton is to demonstrate the degree to which, when he states something, it very frequently has a changed meaning from the original - sometimes far worse than this one example. Read on through the list of 125 for other instances of "Confused". One can certainly forgive one or two minor instances of confusion. It is the repeated pattern that is damning.

MarkeyMouse quotes: "...based on measurements since 2001, and the four statistical models described above the central tendency for projections communicated in the IPCC AR(4) falls outside the range consistent with real earth weather data."http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/ipcc-central-tendency-of-2ccentury-still-rejected/

it does not take a statistician to see the problem with Lucia's claims -- although she has obviously convinced you otherwise.

She is claiming based on less than 8 years of data that she has "falsified" IPCC projected trends (or at least the average of those trends) that were intended to represent the temperature development (under different emissions scenarios) for the long term (decades).

She is essentially comparing an apple (short term trend) with an orange (long term trend)

She's certainly entitled to her opinion, but others who know far more about this stuff (eg, Annan) are entitled to theirs.

And it really is rather ridiculous to be claiming "IPCC falsified" on a blog.

If you are going to make such a claim, at least have the professionalism to get it published in a journal. Otherwise, its just basically hearsay, since most of the people viewing the claims are not going to have the technical knowledge and ability to assess the validity of the claims.

We (or at least I) have no desire to waste time arguing about nonsense.

Besides, as i indicated above, what is aid on blogs means very little.

Some still push the "Einstein was only a lowly patent examiner when he developed relativity" theme, but let's face it, Einstein was not the norm in any sense of the word.

Einstein may have done it, but you can't, I can't and I doubt Lucia can (sorry, but that's reality)

If Lucia were really serious about science, she would make the effort to get her claims (IPCC falsified and the rest) published. The fact that she does not means she is not really serious (afraid that it will be rejected?).

Lucia didn't falsify the IPCC or the models. She 'falsified' the central projection for the TAR. This is reasonable evidence to my semi statistical aware mind that projections from IPCC reports should not be taken seriously over an 8 year period.

But are IPCC projections meant to be taken seriously over 8 year periods?

Lucia has not falsified model projections made in the 80s and 90s that have had 20 or more years to be tested against. From the graphs I've seen comparing temperature history to these projections, these projections look pretty good.

Lucia didn't falsify the IPCC or the models. She 'falsified' the central projection for the TAR. This is reasonable evidence to my semi statistical aware mind that projections from IPCC reports should not be taken seriously over an 8 year period.

Actually, what is more. They were never intended to be applied to 8 year periods.

If you read the AR4, the language

For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emissions scenarios.

Actually, the precise number that Lucia has latched onto (and allegedly falsified) is neither an actual projection nor even an actual value given by IPCC. As you can see in the above quote, they say "about 0.2°C per decade".

Over decades, the normal "noise" associated with a collection (suite) of climate projections averages out and what is left with is essentially the underlying (mean) trend.

But over the very short term, the noise dominates and it is not possible to estimate the trend to within the error bars that she is doing.

One can do a simple thought experiment to see that Lucia is wrong in her approach.

If there were a major El Nino tomorrow, it would almost certainly increase the temperature enough to put the temperature trend over the past decade back up in significant positive territory. And El nino is part of the noise to be normally expected.

Actually, when Lucia began this whole "IPCC falsified" meme, it was based on even less data (just a little over 7 years, in fact).

One of the biggest criticisms I would make is that she has this "running conversation" on her blog where she keeps "updating" her arguments in the latest posts.

For example, if you go back to her very first blog post on the "IPCC falsified" meme, you will see that she does not say "IPCC central tendency of 2C/century falsified (rejected, etc)" (as she says now).

She added the "central tendency" terminology to her later posts.

To avoid criticism?

There are quite specific projections made by the IPCC in the AR4 (eg,for scenario B1 (central value =1.8C, lower bound 1.1C) for which the lower bound of the projection actually falls within the range(s) "trend + 2 sigma" that Lucia is claiming for the past 7+ years (based on her own analysis of most of the data sources)

There is a significant irony in the use of the terminology "central tendency" by Lucia;

Here's what the IPCC says about the SRES scenarios which are used to make the various trend projections in the AR4.

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/emission/142.htm"None of the SRES scenarios represents an estimate of a central tendency for all driving forces and emissions, such as the mean or median, and none should be interpreted as such."

So, (according to IPCC) there is no "central emissions tendency", but apparently (according to Lucia) there is a "central projection tendency".

Even though the projections were based on the emissions scenarios.

Go figure.

And, despite claims to the contrary, one can not legitimately make the argument that "scenario B1 does not apply because the emissions assumptions were lower than what has happened since 2001".

It takes time (measured in years if not decades) for the global temperature of the climate system to respond to emissions increases.

So, for the first 7 years of the IPCC projection run, there will not be much divergence even between projections corresponding to scenarios that have significantly different emissions assumptions (ie, between one that assumes emissions go up a lot and one assumes that they don't go up much)

A significant divergence will not really show up until later on (perhaps a decade or more)

But let's ignore for the moment your obvious (over)reliance on authority to make your argument.

Much of the problem with Lucia's claims has nothing to do with statistics.

Her main (latest) claim "IPCC central tendency of 2C/century falsified" is essentially meaningless, because, as i indicated above, "None of the SRES scenarios represents an estimate of a central tendency for all driving forces and emissions, such as the mean or median, and none should be interpreted as such." -- that according to the IPCC itself

But the IPCC projected trends all depend directly on these scenarios as inputs -- ie, namely, on the emissions assumptions of those scenarios.

So what does Lucia's claim "IPCC central tendency of 2C/century falsified" even mean?

MiniMouse asks about a qualified statistician who proves lucia's claims wrong. I think this guy seems to be qualified, and he shows that her claims are wrong when the trend+noise is modeled. Care to dispute his claims?

Of course lucia chimes in with noise claiming ENSO and vulcanism should be removed from the record, but they are just part of the noise model. She doesn't make any sense with this line of argument, claiming that you need to remove two sources of noise before you can model the noise properly... huh? Give me a break.

"Ian Jolliffe, a noted principal components authority, has posted a comment at Tamino's, which repudiates Tamino's (and Mann's) citation of Jolliffe as a supposed authority for Mannian PCA. He wrote to me separately, notifying me of the posting and authorizing me to cross-post his comment and stating that we had correctly understood and described his comments in our response here"http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3601

To summarise, the expert Jolliffe said he couldn't understand what Tamino was on about.

Dr. Jolliffe criticized me (rightly) for confounding "uncentered" and "decentered" (or "short-segment centered") PCA, and incorrectly interpreting some of his work as legitimizing the use of decentered PCA. He also points out that this confusion is widespread. Finally, he made it clear that he does not endorse the use of decentered PCA.

But he certainly understood what I had done, and was sufficiently interested in some of my results that we are now in communication by email, with the possibility of collaborating on a publication.

MalarkeyMouses's claim that "Jolliffe said he couldn't understand what Tamino was on about" is the kind of rubbish that indicates staggering ignorance or deplorable dishonesty. Or both.

Lucia has taken statements from the IPCC report (like "about 0.2°C per decade") and portrayed them as ironclad predictions with no error range. She's also applied a mistaken model for the behavior of the noise in global average temperature. These issues are addressed here:

This post is about Arthur Smith's comments on the work of Christopher Monckton. It appears that MalarkeyMouse would prefer to talk about anything but that. It would be nice if at least he knew what he was talking about.

One can certainly forgive one or two minor instances of confusion. It is the repeated pattern that is damning.

That's pretty typical of people who want to believe something, although sometimes people are not even fully aware of what they are doing -- because that is how they have always interpreted it themselves.

But when it comes to "fooling themselves", I have my doubts about Monckton.

MarkeyMouse says: Tamino is wrongly cited above as an "expert" statistician. He embarrassed himself spectacularly with PCA. See exactly what Jolliffe said,

".....but my main concern is that I don’t know how to interpret the results when such a strange centring is used? Does anyone? What are you optimising? A peculiar mixture of means and variances? An argument I’ve seen is that the standard PCA and decentred PCA are simply different ways of describing/decomposing the data, so decentring is OK. But equally, if both are OK, why be perverse and choose the technique whose results are hard to interpret? Of course, given that the data appear to be non-stationary, it’s arguable whether you should be using any type of PCA."

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3601

Taminos post above is the usual gross distortion linked with the habitual nasty abuse. What part of "..I don’t know how to interpret the results when such a strange centring is used? Does anyone?" doesn't Tamino understand.

As Tamino deletes most opposing posts from his website, I'll spell it out here. Tamino's only expertise is finding new and unproven ways of getting 2 + 2 to not equal 4, because the obvious answer is disagreeable to him. Every point he has disputed with Lucia he has lost. Tamino is even stupid enough to associate himself with Mann, when he has been recognised by both sides of a US Congressional Committee as being a fraud.

From the Barton Committee, the Democrat said: "MS. SCHAKOWSKY. "...but your question wanted to reinforce the notion that this was based on this false or inaccurate Dr. Mann study ....""

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2335

Regrding noise and Vulcanism, Lucia has found a time period where Vulcanism is absent, and compared it to the IPCC forecast, and found the The IPCC forecast is statistically unlikely to become reality. The Models on which the IPCC is base don't include the effects of Vulcanism, they do include the effects of ENSO.

can you do us a favor. Seeing you're an expert on models would you mind heading to NYC and check Lehman's, Citibank's, AIG's, Wachovia, Bear Stearn's financial models and explain to us why they didn't work. I'm sure that they're not as complex as climate models so it would only take you a few hours on each to come up with the reasons.

MalarkeyMouse is the one who fails to understand Dr. Jolliffe's statement "I don’t know how to interpret the results when such a strange centring is used." He was referring to the work of Mann, Bradley, and Hughes 1998, not referring to any inability to understant what I was "on about."

MalarkeyMouse accuses me of "habitual nasty abuse," then launches into a spree of abuse.

MalarkeyMouse's claim that "Tamino deletes most opposing posts from his website" is an outright lie, as anyone can see by reading my blog.

MalarkeyMouse has gone far beyond the point at which his hostility and ignorance make useful dialogue impossible. Therefore I won't dignify any more of his comments with a reply.

can you do us a favor. Seeing you're an expert on models would you mind heading to NYC and check Lehman's, Citibank's, AIG's, Wachovia, Bear Stearn's financial models and explain to us why they didn't work."

Ah, but they DID work -- and quite spectacularly.

How much money do you suppose the CEO's of those companies have "lost" due to the company "failures."

How much has George Bush lost? Dick Cheney?

Alan Greenspan?

Funny how the people who make the policies are never the losers, isn't it?

MarkeyMouse quotes Jolliffe: "It has recently come to my notice that on the following website, tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/pca-part-4-non-centered-hockey-sticks/ .. , my views have been misrepresented, and I would therefore like to correct any wrong impression that has been given.

An apology from the person who wrote the page would be nice.

In reacting to Wegman’s criticism of ‘decentred’ PCA, the author says that Wegman is ‘just plain wrong’ and goes on to say ‘You shouldn’t just take my word for it, but you *should* take the word of Ian Jolliffe, one of the world’s foremost experts on PCA, author of a seminal book on the subject. He takes an interesting look at the centering issue in this presentation.’ It is flattering to be recognised as a world expert, and I’d like to think that the final sentence is true, though only ‘toy’ examples were given. However there is a strong implication that I have endorsed ‘decentred PCA’. This is ‘just plain wrong’."

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3601

Tamino used decentered PCA in one of his misguided escapades, when called on it, he cited Jolliffe in aid, Jolliffe wanted an appology. Simple. Caught in a lie again Tamino. You really should stop digging. You are burying yourself.

Also,it's common knowledge that you delete posts which you are unable to cope with.

Lastly, read Taminos blog and see for yourself the nasty abuse he indulges in. Finally, I see you excused yourself from replying to the innevitable gotcha.

Anonymouse Commie wrote: "Funny how the people who make the policies are never the losers, isn't it?" Check who removed the 80 year old law preventing Banks from doing anything but Banking, and who removed the standard lending criteria for mortgage lending to minorities? Clue. It was an Administration with WJC in it.

Check who removed the 80 year old law preventing Banks from doing anything but Banking, and who removed the standard lending criteria for mortgage lending to minorities? Clue. It was an Administration with WJC in it."

I never said Bill Clinton was not also responsible, now did I?

As far as i can see, it really makes no difference what party these guys claim membership in.

They are all out principally (and un-principly) to make a fast buck (or million) for themselves and their friends.

Which, of course is why we have to have regulations -- to keep "Libertarians" and others in a position to make the policies from raiding the piggy bank while no one is looking.

anonymous wrote "Funny how the people who make the policies are never the losers, isn't it?" Check who removed the 80 year old law preventing Banks from doing anything but Banking, and who removed the standard lending criteria for mortgage lending to minorities? Clue. It was an Administration with WJC in it."

Well let's see. I presume that you are talking about the Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act. Sponsored by Republicans (including Gramm, a former advisor to McCain). Passed in the Senate by a Republican majority including McCain, over Democratic opposition. Passed in the House by a veto-proof margin with support of 92% of the Republicans and 65% of the Democrats. Funny to blame only Clinton, but whenever the Republican chickens come home to roost, he seems to get the blame.

Anonymous writes: "Lastly, read Taminos blog and see for yourself the nasty abuse he indulges in. Finally, I see you excused yourself from replying to the innevitable gotcha.<"

I did read Tamino's blog, and found an interesting and quite polite discussion in which Tamino apologized for his misunderstanding/misstatement of Jolliffe's views, followed by an informative and courteous discussion between Tamino and Jolliffe, among others. Notably, while critical of Mann's statistical analysis, Jolliffe also comments that "my view is that the chance of all the climate models having got things completely wrong and that by 2030 the Earth is cooler than in 1950 is of the same order of magnitude as the chance that the USA will decide that independence was a bad idea and ask to be taken back as a British colony by the same date"

Anon 12:06 wrote Anonymouse Commie wrote: "Funny how the people who make the policies are never the losers, isn't it?" Check who removed the 80 year old law preventing Banks from doing anything but Banking, and who removed the standard lending criteria for mortgage lending to minorities? Clue. It was an Administration with WJC in it.

Actually, the people responsible for the latest "economic adjustment" (as Greenspan would call it) love saps like you.

Because no matter what they do to you and your family, you excuse it.

They could steal every penny from your retirement account (effectively what they have been doing) -- and leave you an old man on the street begging for a piece of bread -- and you would nonetheless STILL defend them.

Wake up and smell the coffee.

This ain't about communism vs capitalism.

It's about having one's life-long efforts stolen from you by unscrupulous criminals.

You may have no qualms with it, anon 12:06, but I don't like it when some criminal dirt-bag steals my retirement from me.

But by all means, keep your head in the sand (or in a darker, wetter place)

"Jolliffe also comments that "my view is that the chance of all the climate models having got things completely wrong and that by 2030 the Earth is cooler than in 1950 is of the same order of magnitude as the chance that the USA will decide that independence was a bad idea and ask to be taken back as a British colony by the same date"

"In light of your failure to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately."

"Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas ,which she does not fancy)."

"Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed."

can you do us a favor. Seeing you're an expert on models would you mind heading to NYC and check Lehman's, Citibank's, AIG's, Wachovia, Bear Stearn's financial models and explain to us why they didn't work."

What goes up must come down. This has been another simple (but profound) answer to a simple question.

Re: the original content of this post - There is plenty to find wrong with Monckton's analysis, but I am not sure if the nitpicking done by Arthur Smith (e.g., "error#1") helps or hurts the cause. When you mix a bunch of trivial complaints in with more substantive issues, it becomes hard for the lay reader to separate the wheat from the chafe so to speak. Consequently, if the lay reader views several of the initially listed "errors" as nitpicky, he/she may discount the substantive issues with Monckton's "work".

Re: the meltdown of Lehman Bros. and other financial institutions - There is plenty of blame to go around on this, from wall street to mortgage lenders that "forgot" normal underwriting standards to the people that took out loans that they could not reasonably afford. However, it would be nearly impossible to say that one political party is more responsible than the other even though government as a whole was complicit in the problem. Further, although I am sure that Fuld and other top Lehman execs will have more than enough money to survive on, it is silly to imply that they have not suffered financially since much of their total compenstion undoubtedly came from options or restricted stock awards which are now worthless. Not that I necessarily feel sorry for them, but some of these people probably lost more than most of us will make in our lifetimes.

Finally, regarding Lucia's analysis (how this ended up the primary topic of this thread I do not know.) -- I definitely think that her use of the term "falsify" is too strong and think something along the lines of "the estimated global mean surface temperature record since 2001 is not currently consistent with the IPCC's projected trend of about 0.2C/decade for the first two decades of this century" would be the appropriate conclusion to draw from her analysis. This doesn't say that it couldn't catch up in the next 12 years, but that, as of right now, it ain't there yet. From the IPCC document, it is clear the 0.2C/decade (or slightly higher) is the "best estimate" for the first two decades of this century under all emissions scenarios. Further, IPCC stated that we are committed to 0.1C/decade for the first two decades of this century no matter what, even if GHG emissions were capped at 2000 levels (they weren't and have kept increasing).

Of course there is going to be interannual variability in the temperature record (dubbed by many as "noise"). However, IPCC did make a relatively specific projection (~0.2C/decade) for the first 2 decades of this century and also placed what could read to be an absolute lower bound on the trend(0.1C/decade based on past emissions and warming "in the pipeline"). By my calculation we are almost 40% through the first two decades of this century. I don't think that 40% of the way through is too soon to start comparing the projections to the actual data no matter how "noisy" the data may be. If I projected my son would get an A in his chemistry class this semester and 40% of the way through the class he was getting a C-, I would carefully examine my projection even if it was mathematically possible that he could still pull off an A.

It's isn't a question of what goes up and down, Eli. The issue is why did the models fail in valuing the embedded assets incorrectly. If models are able to this why are so reliant in your stuff. There are reasonable parallels to explore instead of mindlessly dismiss.

Perhaps you could ask Gavin Schmidt to come up with an answer see you're so close to him.

Previous anon:

No, the models valuing the CDO's are not economic models. Thanks for trying.

bob n said From the IPCC document, it is clear the 0.2C/decade (or slightly higher) is the "best estimate" for the first two decades of this century under all emissions scenarios."

perhaps you can cite the actual IPCC document and page where they say that.

You can't because they don't.

This is what the IPCC actually says in the AR4.

For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emissions scenarios.

As i pointed out about, the IPCC actually attached a caveat to their statement about emissions scenarios (upon which the projected trends are based)"None of the SRES scenarios represents an estimate of a central tendency for all driving forces and emissions, such as the mean or median, and none should be interpreted as such."

But Lucia talks incessantly about the "IPCC Central tendency" (for projections) as if there is such a thing (which there is not)

There is a problem even with the claim that

"the estimated global mean surface temperature record since 2001 is not currently consistent with the IPCC's projected trend of about 0.2C/decade for the first two decades of this century" would be the appropriate conclusion to draw from her analysis"

The first and primary problem is that we are not even through the first decade yet! (and when Lucia started this whole IPCC falsified meme, we were barely through 7 years)

There is a reason the IPCC did not even say the following

For the next 20 years, a warming of about 0.02°C per year is projected for a range of SRES emissions scenarios.

The second problem (which is actually related to the first) is that in order to say that one trend is "inconsistent" with another, one has to have a way of deciding and statistics is the logical choice.

For that reason, Lucia has chosen 2 standard deviations about the calculated trend (the usual choice) upon which to base her decision.

So the error bars that one attaches to the trend calclated from the data since 2001 are critical.

But Lucia's error bars are simply too narrow.

As Tamino points out, she uses a model (AR1) that simply does not apply to the global temperature time series which results in an underestimate of the error on the calculated trend, which results in her "Falsified at the 95% level" claim.

But i will agree with one thing. "falsified" is certainly exceedingly poor terminology in this case, at any rate.

One of the key built-in assumptions of "free-market" capitalism is that, as Pfaff says

"Owners and managers will be rewarded according to the true value of what each contributes to the common interest. Otherwise they will lose business and fail.

Those last two clauses demonstrate how artificial this theory is. That "That artificiality-that remoteness from how the real world functions-is why the market has to be regulated..."

Pfaff's comments about "realism" apply as much to the global warming issue as they do to the financial issue

"...public policy must be reconstructed on the basis of a historical understanding of how people actually behave rather than on theories about how they might be presumed to behave in the world of abstractions.

This understanding is called realism, and in American public affairs during the past two decades it has been scorned. However, one good thing about realism is that being realistic eventually turns out to be right"

/////end Pfaff quote

///////

It is high time that we dispensed with the virtual reality (and all the "speculators, swindlers, confidence men, guys trafficking in inside information, and criminal actors" peddling it) and started paying attention to the REAL reality.

Anon: "What the IPCC projected is what the IPCC projected. Read the AR4". Exactly, anon can't bring himself to say what the actual projection is, as that would leave it open to challenge. Instead we are urged to "read the AR4".

"During the last five years of his tenure as CEO of now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld's total take was $354 million. John Thain, the current chairman of Merrill Lynch, taken over this week by Bank of America, has been on the job for just nine months. He pocketed a $ 15 million signing bonus.His predecessor, Stan O'Neal, retired with a package valued at $161 million, after the company reported an eight billion dollar loss in a single quarter. And remember Bear Stearns Chairman James Cayne? After the company collapsed earlier this year and was up for sale at bargain basement prices, he sold his for more than $60 million."

//end Moyers quote

The financial models have worked well indeed -- for some. But then again, that may be the primary ones they were intended to work for.

Show a single temperature projection from AR4 which is materially different from 2C/century."

B1: +1.8°C (1.1°C to 2.9°C)

Taken fromAR4 WG-1 Report (Chapt 10, Executive Summary, p 749)

1.1°C is the lower bound for the estimate (at 95% probability level)

Lucia rather conveniently ignores the range on the actual IPCC projected trends (in addition to ignoring the actual trends, of course) when she makes her "IPCC Projections Falsified at 95% confidence" claim.

When one is determining whether a real trend is consistent with a projected one at the 95% confidence level, one must take into account the error bars on both trends, which Lucia does not do.

That's very basic statistics. Freshman level stuff.

And by the way, that B1 projection is consistent with the majority of the ranges Lucia gives for her trends since 2001. (in fact, even the 1.8C central value for B1 falls with the 95% range given by Lucia for several of the temperature data sources she analyzes, despite the fact that Lucia has underestimated the error for those ranges)

She can't falsify the actual trends IPCC gives (eg, B1), but instead creates an imaginary "IPCC Central tendency of 2C/century" and ignores the fact that, even if it did exist as an actual IPCC projection (which it does not), it too would have error bars attached to it.

Lucia's "argument" that she has "Falsified the IPCC Central tendency" (of projections) is a red herring.

There are so many different problems with Lucia's "IPCC projections continue to falsify" claim that it is really hard to address any one of them without addressing all the others.

Just some of the problems

1) she invokes a purely imaginary "IPCC Central tendency" with no error bars that somehow "represents" the IPCC Ar4 projections, despite the fact that the IPCC itself warned that none of the emissions scenarios used to produce the individual projections represent a "central emissions tendency".

2) she ignores the fact that IPCC made quite specific projections albeit for the longer term (decade or more)

3) she uses a period of less than 8 years (barely 7 when she started making her claims) to "falsify IPCC projections" when the IPCC projections were clearly intended to apply to more than a decade (and are actually specified for the entire 21st century -- hint: that's why they are written as "per century")

4) she underestimates the error bars to be attached to the trend(s) for the data for the past 8 years (using the wrong model for climate noise) Over the short term (< decade), the climate noise (due to El Nino, la Nina, etc) can have a very big effect on the calculated trend.

5) She ignores the advice of people like James Annan and Gavin Schmidt (who actually do climate modeling and understand what the IPCC projections in AR4 mean) when they try to explain what is wrong with her approach.

MarkeyMouse says, Let's see. Anon 1 says, "creates an imaginary "IPCC Central tendency of 2C/century" and ignores the fact that, even if it did exist as an actual IPCC projection (which it does not),", Anon 2 says; "IPCC made quite specific projections", some confusion here? No actual projection, OR a quite specific projection?

Lucia has already dealt with the data model choice here: "Climate blog-viating being what it is, readers interested in whether the current flat trend in data is consistent with 2C/century are reading terms like “ARMA(1,1)” ; those who have been reading my blog are aware that I have extended my hypothesis tests to include results we obtain if we use a statistical model called “AR(1)+ White Noise”. Some of you may be wondering, “Does the choice between these two models make much of a difference when testing the 2C/century trend hypothesis?” The answer is: Practically none."

IPCC AR4 says: "The future projections discussed in this chapter are based upon the standard scenarios

All models assessed here, for all the non-mitigation scenarios considered, project increases in global mean surface air temperature (SAT) (my comment, but B1 assumes no increase in CO2, therefore the actual projection chosen for falsification should be way higher than 2 Deg C)"

and see Figure 10.29. For the IPCC's own error bars. "Projections and uncertainties for global mean temperature increase in 2090 to 2099 (relative to the 1980 to 1999 average) for the six SRES marker scenarios. The AOGCM means and the uncertainty ranges of the mean –40% to +60% are shown as black horizontal solid lines and grey bars, respectively. For comparison, results are shown for the individual models (red dots) of the multi-model AOGCM ensemble for B1, A1B and A2, with a mean and 5 to 95% range (red line and circle) from a fi tted normaldistribution...." Loads of PROJECTIONS and ERROR BARS.

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch10.pdf

Lucia has already dealt with some idiot called Penguin Dreams who traise similar points to the ones above.

She says: "The report by the WG1 for the AR4 is chock full of things that can be construed as central tendencies for a variety of projections. These include discussions of the expected value for the rise in GMST over time, the expected value for precipitation in the future, and the expected rise in sea level. Anyone who knows the definition of “central tendency” should easily find all sorts of things that “could be construed” as a central tendency.

The dark lines on figure 10.4 can certainly be “construed” as central tendencies for the rate of increase in GMST. In fact, they indicate the average of GCM predictions used as the basis for the AR4 projections. Average is the most common use of “central tendencies”, so I should think anyone who knew the definition of “central tendency” could at least construe this as a central tendency for projected trend in GMST....." Read more at http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/jonathan-asked-me-to-respond-to-penguindreams/

He didn't know what a Central Tendancy is, (The Mean, Median and the Mode: The mean, median and the mode are summary statistics, they describe the central tendency of a set of numbers.) and shot himself in the foot.

I agree it was long, but I thought long and hard about whether to link or not. I decided the commenter to whom it was directed probably wouldn't bother following the link but would have no option but to read through the CV.

However, since you've seen fit to raise the issue, please delete the previous post from me.

The CV of that "idiot" penguindreams (aka R. Grumbine) can be read here, Malarkey Mouse (aka King Prat).

A late lunch and some odd surfing. Some even odder comments in the blog world. Oh well.

One thing I don't do is blindly assume that when a statistician says 'central tendency', I know which one of the infinity she means. Nor, when a statistician quotes someone else's document as saying that there's a 'central tendency' -- when they never use any of the terms which can be taken as that -- do I figure the number she attributes is necessarily correct.

Since there are an infinity of central tendencies, if a statistician wants to disprove someone else's work based on 'central tendency', she'd better a) define which one she chose and why or b) quote the original source to the effect. She did neither.

She and her fans then decide that my wanting some rigor is unfair, unreasonable, and means that I don't know what a central tendency is. hm.

Then she and they whine about it only being a blog (so she shouldn't have to say where she gets the statements she's 'disproving') a 'conversation' (so a bland 'we talked about that sometime before in history', is supposed to be taken as a reference sufficient that I should believe whatever they want at the moment) but nevertheless get ... annoyed ... when I observe that such things aren't what a rigorous (their term) work disproving peer-reviewed research would look like.

... Most recent anon:I forget the location of publication, but the paper (if you're thinking of the same one I am) turned on exactly the business of there being an infinity of central tendencies. Their argument being that since there's an infinity (and, they asserted, no reason to prefer one over another) of such tendencies, you could only consider 'warming' to happen if all temperatures for all points in a time and space subset were higher than all temperatures in all points of the other time and space subset. This leads, among other things, to the conclusion that you can't tell that Chicago is cooler than Tampa. There are days (Chicago high summer) when Chicago is warmer than Tampa (the latter's low temperatures in winter). But I'm still pretty sure that Chicago is cooler than Tampa, even if the non-climatologists involved want to tell me that I can't say so.

"creates an imaginary "IPCC Central tendency of 2C/century" and ignores the fact that, even if it did exist as an actual IPCC projection (which it does not),", Anon 2 says; "IPCC made quite specific projections", some confusion here? No actual projection, OR a quite specific projection?

The only confusion is yours, Malarkey.

The IPCC made many specific projections, but the "2C/century" ("Central Tendency") just did not happen to be one of them.

The closest the IPCC came to referring to what might be construed as a "central value" was their statement

For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emissions scenarios.

I would guess that to most scientists and engineers "about 0.2C" means anything from 0.15C to 0.24C. Not "precisely 0.2C".

malarkey continues"Loads of PROJECTIONS and ERROR BARS."

You are very confused, Malarkey. That was precisely the point being made.

The IPCC specifies error bars for their individual projections (which, by the way are all CENTURY trends and CENTURY error bars)

So why does Lucia ignore all that when she does her analysis?

She assumes error bars only on the temperature trends based on data since 2001.

She takes her "central tendency of 0.2C/decade" and sees if it falls within the calculated trend + 2*std deviation range. When it falls outside the range, she concludes that she has "falsified the IPCC projections".

That is simply nonsense. To determine whether a "projected trend" is consistent with actual temperature data, one has to take into account the error bars on both the data trend and the projection trend.

Your argument that Lucia can safely ignore scenario B1 in her "IPCC projections [plural] continue to falsify" because, as you claim "B1 assumes no increase in CO2" is just nonsense.

First, B1 makes no such assumption (you just made that up). It is a mitigation scenario, NOT a zero emission scenario.

Second, a certain amount of time is required for the temperature to respond to any emissions increase, so after such a brief period (7 years), even a scenario that assumes a fairly large emissions increase (over the entire century) will yield a temperature increase over the first few years that looks very much like that of B1.

Finally, the real problem with Lucia's approach is using a "central tendency" for temperature projections when there is no corresponding central tendency for emissions (by the IPCC's own caveat)

Lucia could rather easily have performed her statistics on actual IPCC projections, using actual IPCC error bars.

malarkey said: B1 assumes no increase in CO2, therefore the actual projection chosen for falsification should be way higher than 2 Deg C)

malarkey, your claim is just absolute nonsense.

If B1 assumed "no increase in CO2" over the twentieth century, there is no way in hell that it could result in the 1.8C/century projected for it by the IPCC!

That is completely and utterly illogical.

You talk about "idiots". Well, I guess it takes one to know one.

There is warming in the pipeline but it sure as hell ain't 1.8C. Most estimates I have seen are about 0.5C, which would still leave 1.3C unaccounted for -- or 0.6C if you take the lower bound for scenario B1 (1.1C/century)

You are certainly thoroughly confused, malarkey. Of that there is no doubt whatsoever.

But even if we assume that you have misread the IPCC graphs and confused "increase in yearly CO2 emissions" with "increase in CO2" (a pretty stupid mistake in itself), you would STILL be wrong, at least for the period under discussion here (2001 - present). In fact, under the latter assumption, you would STILL be wrong for almost the whole first half of this century.

As anyone can see for themselves in Figure 3 of this IPCC document, under B1, yearly CO2 emissions are assumed to increase by about 40% between 2000 and 2040. Only then does the yearly increase (over the last year's emissions) stop (and reverse for the remainder of the century)

But over that same period, the total cumulative carbon dioxide emissions are about 400 Gt (about 10 Gt/yr for 40 years). And over the entire century, total cumulative carbon dioxide emissions are about 900 Gt. (shown in Figure 4 of the above document)

Only about half that stays in the atmosphere, but still, there is certainly no claiming that "B1 assumes no increase in CO2"

"This month, the IPCC 2C/century projection [sic] was falsified using the averaged data..."

[the IPCC made no such single projection]

"IPCC central tendency of 2C/Century [sic] still rejected"

Nothing like settling on a single claim.

Interestingly, "IPCC Central tendency falsified" was NOT her original claim, although she continues to swap in the original "IPCC Projections falsified" claim now and again, as if the two were interchangeable.

This conversation is about the FIRST DECADE (not even!) of this century: Lucia has staked her claims on just the past 7+ years.

So let's focus on that, shall we?

As anyone can see from fig 3 in this IPCC document, yearly emissions do not even begin to "decline" under scenario B1 until around 2040 (and that's a decline in yearly emissions relative to the previous year's emissions, not relative to 2000).

In fact, up until about 2040, yearly emissions continue to INCREASE under scenario B1

********Point of clarification for malarkey and others who may not be familiar with the English language: "increase" is the antonym of "decline" .

2nd Point of clarification for the same crowd: "antonym" means "opposite"***************

For scenario B1, over the time period 2000-2040, yearly emissions actually increase (did i mention that "increase" is the opposite of "decline"?) by some 40%, and the rate of increase is greatest over the first part of the 21st century. CO2 emissions do not drop back down to even 2000 levels under B1 until around 2070 or so.

But what happens to emissions under scenario B1 over the last half (or even the second decade!) of the century is completely irrelevant to this conversation about Lucia's claims, which have to do specifically with the period 2001-2008.

More to the point: When you look at "total cumulative CO2 emissions" (shown in fig 4, in the same doc i just linked to) from 2001-2008 for the various emissions scenarios, you can see that there is virtually no difference between B1 and the scenarios which are non-mitigation scenarios.

The divergence between scenarios does not become significant until later on.

So, when it comes to projected temp change, there is also no significant difference between B1 and other scenarios over the first 8 years.

That is precisely why the IPCC was able to make the following general statement

For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emissions scenarios.

The whole idea that Lucia can completely ignore the scenario B1 projection because the emissions under B1 from 2001-present are somehow significantly different than for the other scenarios is ridiculous on its face.

But I suspect that Lucia actually knows that.

And I suspect that she also knows the following :

In order to "Falsify IPCC Projections" (plural) as she has claimed, Lucia has to "falsify" the B1 projection: 1.8C/century with a lower (95% probability) bound of 1.1C/century.

And in order to do that, she must use the lower bound for B1 --ie, she must take the error bar on the projection into account.

But she can't, because 1.1C falls within her specified "95% ranges" (ie, the ones she has used to "falsify")

But it really is a waste of time to even discuss it any further.

As i indicated above, if Lucia were the least bit serious, she would at get her claims published in a peer reviewed journal.

And for that, she would have to actually present her claims in a coherent form that actually makes sense (which might present a bit of a problem, in this case)

Most scientists could not even be bothered wading through all the crap on blogs.

What Lucia actually says: "....based on measurements since 2001, and the four statistical models described above the central tendency for projections communicated in the IPCC AR(4) falls outside the range consistent with real earth weather data..." http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/ipcc-central-tendency-of-2ccentury-still-rejected/

Incidentally, to anyone who does not believe she has actually made all the above claims, just do a google search on each of them (without the "[sic]" of course )

And to anyone who thinks it is OK to simply ignore the error bars on the IPCC projections when determining whether IPCC projections are consistent with observed temperature trends, you might read what Gavin Schmidt of real Climate says about this:

The IPCC has always published ranges of future scenarios, rather than a single one, to cover uncertainties both in future climate forcing and in climate response. This is reflected in the IPCC graph below, and likewise in the earlier comparison by Rahmstorf et al. 2007 in Science."

"Any meaningful validation of a model with data must account for this stated uncertainty [uncertainty for the projections, for the case under discussion]. If a theoretical model predicts that the acceleration of gravity in a given location should be 9.84 +- 0.05 m/s2, then the observed value of g = 9.81 m/s2 would support this model. However, a model predicting g = 9.84+-0.01 would be falsified by the observation. The difference is all in the stated uncertainty. A model predicting g = 9.84, without any stated uncertainty, could neither be supported nor falsified by the observation, and the comparison would not be meaningful."//end Schmidt quote

stuff in brackets [] added by me

What that means is that it is NOT legitimate to use a single precise value (0.2C) with no error bars to somehow "represent" the "IPCC projections" and then simply see if that value falls within the range (trend plus or minus error) for the observed temperature trend(s).

One has to consider the errors associated with the projected trends (as noted above for B1) as well.

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Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett is a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny, a chair election from retirement, at a wanna be research university that has a lot to be proud of but has swallowed the Kool-Aid. The students are naive but great and the administrators vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional. His colleagues are smart, but they have a curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they occasionally heed his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.